“Home on the Range” cowshare update, from Gordon Watson, British Columbia

Naomi Fournier of Birdsong cowshare in Enderby BC, with her cow, "Blossom"

Special to The Bovine, Oct. 10, 2008, BURNABY, BC, by Gordon Watson of Bovinity:

The situation with our raw milk dairy, is as follows:

Starting in May 2007, with one cow our herd has grown to 13 cows in milk, today, plus five other cows and calves in the field. Our herd is all-Jersey plus one Guernsey.   Home on the Range looks after them as they supply about 40 gallons per day of fluid milk, along with yogurt, butter, butter oil, cream cheese, and colostrum when available, to 200 households. It may be that we’re the largest raw milk herdshare in Canada.

Unbeknownst to us, in June of 2008, officials from the BC Centre for Disease Control, and the provincial Health and Agriculture Ministries, had heard about our raw milk dairy, and decided we had to be stopped. As revealed in their internal e-mails – which I obtained via Freedom of Information requests – they did not have a genuine complaint. They took samples of our milk from the farm and from the Fraser Deli., then had them tested at a lab.

Lacto-Fermented Raw Milk for Health

Today’s excerpt is from an AOL Canada page called “The Healthy Foodie”. This is from a feature story titled “Lacto-Fermented Vegetables — Probiotic in a glass“. The author, Doug DiPasquale, is a Holistic Nutritionist and trained chef, living in Toronto. It’s notable that the author expresses a definite preference for raw milk for use in making kefir.

How I make Raw Milk Kefir — the easy way

Doug is not the only who likes to make raw milk kefir. I always prefer to eat my raw milk in the form of kefir, which I make in a very simple way. I heat up a pot of milk on the stove, stirring more or less constantly and sticking my finger in every so often. When the temperature approaches the limit of comfort, I remove the milk from the heat and pour it back into the jars, adding some starter, half a cup for 2 liters. My aim with the heating is not to kill any bacteria, but to create a situation in which the kefir bacterial culture will grow quickly. The starter I use is just kefir from the previous batch. Originally I started using the Body Ecology diet kefir starter powder. Then I put the jars of milk in a cooler with some containers of hot water and leave them there for about 12-18 hours (depending on how “tart” you like it). Then I take them out and refrigerate them. The first time you do it, using the powder, the fermenting process takes maybe 12 hours longer. -Ed.

Anyway, here’s what Doug Dipasquale says about it all in his “The Healthy Foodie” blog:

As if pasteurization wasn’t bad enough

From the “Everything has a Reason” blog, here’s an excerpt from a story titled “Homogenizing raw milk kills everything in it”. The picture also from that story. Mostly on this blog, our main concern has been around pasteurization. But there’s little doubt in my mind that the associated practice of homogenization, is also problematic in its long-term effects on health. I’m not sure this author has all the facts straightened out to 100% correctness, but it does at least serve as a good reminder that pasteurization is not the only problem with processed “milk”.

commercial dairy cows waiting to be fed

“Homogenization is a process to prevent or delay natural separation of cream from the rest of the emulsion. The fat in milk normally separates from the water and collects at the top. Homogenization breaks the fat into smaller sizes so it no longer separates, allowing the sale of non-separating 1%, 2%, and whole milk. This is accomplished by forcing the milk at high pressure through small orifices.

Another method of homogenization uses extruders, hammermills, or colloid mills to mill (grind) solids.

So, pasteurizing our raw milk is not enough. Commercialize farmers needs to homogenized it too to kill what ever is left that are good and bad for the human body. Not only that, they will also add non natural ingredients to it.